Millions in Pakistan are without electricity as the country suffered a nationwide outage on Monday morning due to a “major breakdown” of the national grid, the power ministry said.
Homes, hospitals, schools and factories are impacted in all major cities.
The outage triggered by a “frequency variation” has left large parts of the country including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Gujranwala without electricity.
The breakdown began at 7:34 am (0234 GMT) when a voltage fluctuation in the grid occurred between Jamshoro and Dadu in southern Sindh province, power minister Khurrum Dastagir. “There was a fluctuation in voltage and the systems were shut down one by one” he said.
The power ministry issued a statement saying that work was ongoing to revive the system, and the minister said that electricity had been restored in some parts of the country.
The energy minister says the authorities are working to restore electricity in the country in the next 12 hours.
117 grid stations affected in Islamabad
In Islamabad, nearly 117 grid stations were affected due to the breakdown, the Islamabad Electric Supply Company spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that restoration at 132kV grid stations in Zero Point, Rawal, F-16, F-6, D-12, F-6, I-8 and Chaklala was underway, adding that complete repair of the system will take some time.
